4 ms·

> poisoner gradually builds up his tolerance to arsenic from small doses, then consumes arsenic-poisoned food/drink along with the victim Probably most famousl

• Blahah 6y ago
  Probably not, at least as a proportion of the population, given that by the 1930s the entire reading public of the USA and UK knew about arsenic eaters. Probably most famously in Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers (1930)[0]. Also taught in schools across the British Empire in the early 1900s would have been the stories of King Mithridates[1], or of the Arsenic eaters of Styria (see this 1869 Scientific American Article [2]). 0: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/may/09/chilean-arsenic-eaters-classic-work-of-crime-fiction-strong-poison-dorothy-l-sayers https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/may/09/chilean... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI#Mithridates'_antidote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI#Mithridates'_an... 2: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-arsenic-eaters-of-styria https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-arsenic-eater...
  • MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    Isn't it sad that an article written in the 1860d contains more interesting content and actual data than even the average article or op ed price today? Regardless, that was a very interesting read!
    • renewiltord 6y ago
      That's just survivor bias.
• dan_hawkins 6y ago
  > (not arsenic, though) Iocaine. I bet my life on it!